Cyanide
by Legumevert
Summary: Craig didn't say anything, mostly because he didn't have a clue what he should have said under such circumstances. So he simply stood there, turning his back to Kenny and absent-mindedly scratching the clotted blood under his nails. As for his clothes, they were as good as dead. He knew it wasn't worth giving it a try.


**I don't own South Park. You'd have guessed it, but oh well.**

 **Here's a little idea that kept running in my head since I woke up and would have kept doing so hadn't I written it down. Please review if you feel like it, either love or hate, I take both and I swear I won't eat you!**

 **Once again, it's just a rough translation of something I initially wrote in French, so any comment about mistakes or awkward sentences would be very, very welcome. I'm still learning, y'know! French version is better, if you ever want to give it a try. ;)**

He was freezing. Hell, he'd have frozen to death soon enough. The meager bushes covered in frost that shimmered in the garden could have drawn the poet in his heart out of his slumber –but had a longwinded moron ever been stuck in there to begin with, he'd have passed away a while ago. Craig was way too cold to care for the beauty of winter in South Park. All he saw was a ridiculous yard infested with weeds, fissures and cracks on a decrepit façade where a few geraniums hung miserably. They were long withered and looked to warn their siblings back in the mud not to try anything stupid like blooming here. The breath he blew on his numb fingers was ice-cold. He put his hands back in the pockets of his thick sweater. The idea had been to check whether they'd fallen to pieces rather than to warm them up. He'd given up on that long ago. It was pointless to even try.

The kid gave the door another ghastly look. That fucking son of a bitch of a goddamn thing could have spun open anytime, but it was definitely determined to remain closed and, he could tell from experience, locked. It was stupid, as any thief with the least bit of motivation would only have had to climb up the gutter and push the DIY window of Kevin's old room: a mattress that replaced the broken glass of the previous one. For the McCormick's defense, there weren't many valuable things for a burglar to steal in their house, not any more that in any other one of that shitty neighborhood. He scowled at the thought: how long would it be before someone assaulted him? The temperature is too freaking low for anyone to sneak out, he hoped. But still, that fucking asshole could have hurried a little.

Tucker regretted to have thrown his cellphone away, although the feeling didn't last long. He would have been caught right away with that thing stuffed in his jeans. But dying at the door of this house wasn't especially delightful either.

"Craig?"

"Fuck it, dude."

He didn't manage to fully hide the smile on his lips when the door finally opened, in spite of the awful noise it made. The hinges were desperately crying for some oil. Kenny hadn't turned the lights on, probably as to not wake his parents up. Craig was almost sure they were lying in their bed or on the couch, too drunk to truly mind his intrusion. The dirty yellow streetlights revealed part of his features in the dark. Craig could make out his snub nose, a few freckled, the shape of his lips, yet his eyes, as well as the expression he wore, were obscured by a dim, shadowy veil. Truth be told, he liked it better that way. After all, he himself wouldn't have looked exactly rejoiced if someone had decided to drag him out of his precious bed at five a.m.

"Can I come in?", he asked while walking closer, his hands still in his pocket.

"Oh, hem, yeah. Of course."

The other boy let him in, and he didn't need to tell Craig twice. The second he closed the door behind his back, Tucker felt better. Shout out to the awesome genius who invented those things. Doors were wonderful. The house wasn't anything special, the isolation sucked, and draughts haunted the place like ghosts, but it was still okay. He didn't doubt that it wouldn't be long before he changed his mind on the subject, when he'd have forgotten all about the sting of the outrageously low temperature in the city streets. For the time though, he welcomed that little rest from the bottom of his heart and solemnly vowed that he'd have been more than content with spending the remaining of his life in this sordid hallway. It was decked with humidity stains from the floor up to the ceiling. The tapestry hung helplessly on the wall, trying its best to cover up mediocre plaster when stupid paintings didn't carry that job out. Neither of those attempts were met with great success.

Craig didn't say anything, mostly because he didn't have a clue what he should have said under such circumstances. So he simply stood there, turning his back to Kenny and absent-mindedly scratching the clotted blood under his nails. As for his clothes, they were as good as dead. He knew it wasn't worth giving it a try.

"Craig?"

"Hm?"

"You planning on spending the night in the hallway, or what? I think there's some coffee left in the kitchen. In case you want some."

The blonde whispered and gestured toward a door at the far left end. It was as useless as it was stupid. He knew the place. He knew Clyde's place too, and Token's, and Cartman's. Everybody knew everybody's place here –even though recently, Craig had mostly known this one, which only made the precision all the more useless and stupid. He wasn't the kind of person who was constantly bugged by every single thing; speaking of bugs, the many cockroaches would have been a serious handful anyway. Then he followed McCormick. The house was small, but the kitchen was quite distant from the living room and, on top of that, it had to be the warmest room.

He grimaced at the thick coat of grease on the tiles. The first time he'd come here, he already knew he could never get used to it. It was still true that day. He let himself fall on one of the chairs haphazardly scattered around the table, with the delicacy their flimsiness called for. He watched Kenny as he bustled about the coffee maker, a gift from some jerk whose name he didn't remember. It could have been quite useful, had the McCormick bothered to ever buy good coffee.

"What happened?"

"I was like, super cold", he stated in a monotonous tone. "So I thought I should call you, since, you know, I…"

"That's not what I meant. What happened, Craig?"

Kenny turned around to face him. Tiredness and incomprehension were sprawled over his eyes. They were fucking expressive, as usual: that was probably the reason everyone understood what he meant even when he barely uttered a word. Ken was a nice guy, rather discreet. He was no talkative moron; not a judgmental one either. All in all, he was a pretty bearable folk –someone he actually like enough for his number to pop up in his mind when he didn't have anyone to call. The kid knew there'd be people expecting him at home. He hadn't wanted to go anywhere else. He wandered about outside the city all day, as darker shades of nightly mauves and blues brought about a polar cold he couldn't bear. One hour passed by, then two, then three, and he had literally frozen. The police sirens had stopped ringing in the city-center. And so, he finally dared coming back.

Loneliness hadn't been a pain. All those people, all the stupid douchebags who lived here –he was better off without them, a hundred, a thousand times better. As for Kenny, it was something different. He didn't feel like giving it much thought.

Kenny slightly shook his head before his lack of answer and got a chipped cup out of the shelf.

"Why me?"

"I like you", he answered bluntly. "You're trustworthy."

Kenny put on an awkward smile, with what Craig supposed was light embarrassment. They started hanging out when Tweek died and never truly stopped since then. Kenny often said that absolute shitheads with no future like them had to stick together. He said this laughing, and Craig laughed too, and he thought it sounded true. At the end of the year, Kyle would get a scholarship. That much was for sure. Token would go away too, simply because he had the money for that. Wendy would go work for some random charity if her grades weren't enough to get her to college. She and Stan would apply for the same ones, and Stan would go wherever he wished to go because Kyle helped in out and that he was real good at football. Bebe had found the course she dreamt of and Cartman, well, he'd "keep himself busy", as he liked to put it. Butters would stick around him. Nobody ever worried about what would become of that fatass, only for those around him. It was a matter of miles rather than a direct entourage, to be honest. Craig himself wasn't sure to be safe.

They, on the other hand, had surely required God's Great Intervention to manage to go all the way through high school. So, yeah, he found all this hilarious –in a cruel way, but hilarious all the same.

"You're not the same as everyone else. That's why…"

"That's why?"

Craig nodded, although he didn't really get the reason he did. That was why, yeah. As well as plenty other reasons he didn't feel like explaining. It would have been too long and complicated and there weren't even any word for a good half of what he wanted to say anyway. That or he didn't know them, which was basically the same. Kenny poured some coffee. The scent floated in the room; a reassuring scent for sure, a usual one that had always existed and always would. Tucker crossed his arms and closed his eyes. He liked the scent way better than the actual coffee.

"Everybody's looking for you, y'know. They… They've been looking or you all day."

"I know."

"They ran all over the city."

"But I'm faster."

Kenny leant against the shelf and kept quiet for a while. He stared at his friend, his teeth clenched. His voice trembled slightly, even though he was trying to keep calm. Craig for his part didn't even need to try. He was warm, or at least more or less. He wasn't alone anymore and everything was alright in the best world ever. He just had leave out the rest, and everything would be just fine.

"Plus, I know the city. We both do, right? All those streets and short-cuts. The cops never got us. Remember that time we stole all that stuff at the shop? They still didn't catch us.

"It was awesome", Kenny genuinely laughed. "They walked right past us and they didn't even think to open the trash bin."

"They could have followed us just with the smell, afterwards."

"Not all the way to Stark's pond."

"Seriously? And how do you think Butters did, huh?"

"You got a point."

Silence crept back in the room, but it wasn't upsetting. Real friends can clam up when they've got nothing to say.

"We had fun back then, huh? It wasn't such a bad life."

"It's still a good one, Ken. We could run away."

Craig took his eyes off the table to look at Kenny in the eye. He didn't give a fuck about the dark circles around them –it even reminded him of the sky. Those were the purple tones of twilight and the blue of the afternoon sky that refused to disappear quite yet and didn't care for tomorrows. Tomorrows didn't matter. Yesterdays didn't either.

"We could run away", he kept going with the shred of a smile on his lips. "We could go anywhere too. And we'd have fun like this all the time. I've been thinking about it for a while, you know. I didn't know how to ask, so I didn't until now, but we…"

"Craig."

"… Maybe near the sea, or…"

"Craig, stop. It's too late."

"Or somewhere else, Kenny, I don't know, anywhere else, just… Far away from here, and all those people who… Who, Ken, we could run away. I didn't know how to ask."

"You should have asked anyway."

"I'm doing it now."

He didn't break eye contact. He should have had, that much was true. But he had needed this to realize it –Tucker, His Cowardice Personified, had once again lacked the balls. Not anymore, though. Now, he'd get his shit together and everything would be alright.

"Want some sugar?"

"You know I hate it."

McCormick still poured a spoonful of matte white powder in the cup. His face was hollow; his lips a crisp, his hands shaking. Poor Kenny. He often made him so sad.

"Are you cold?"

"No."

Of course he wasn't. He put the cup right before him and somehow managed not spill any on the table. It exhaled the scent of coffee but another one, light and plain, was mixed with it. It smelled like the cakes his grandmother used to bake.

"You should drink it now, or it will get cold and I–"

"I don't want to."

His voice suddenly cracked. He didn't want to drink that –god, he didn't want to. Not now.

"Kenny, I… I know I shouldn't have done that, I'm sorry. But I don't want to drink it. Please."

He dived in his eyes again. Kenny looked away.

"I called the cops, Craig. They're already coming over. If they catch you, you're done for. I don't even know what they'll do to you. You killed them all. Ten persons died, I don't have a clue how many were severely wounded. So please, I beg of you, drink it."

"No."

"Craig."

Kenny put his hand on his shoulder and sat on the chair next to his. He obviously had trouble standing. Tucker firmly hold the cup.

"You got nothing more to tell me?"

Craig shook his head: nothing more, no. He drank it all at once –bitter and disgusting. His throat tightened in the second.

"Yes, I do: your coffee sucks."

"I really did like you a lot, you know. That's why I did this. It's better."

Craig thought Kenny was crying, but he wasn't sure. He couldn't feel his fingers anymore, nor anything else, if that mattered. Even the hand on his shoulder barely seemed to exist. What he knew for sure though was that he was dying to cry. What a stupid asshole –he wanted to cry so badly.

"It's better if it's me."

"We had so much fun, uh… They…"

He didn't see anything no more either. Maybe Ken was right, maybe he was the one that had been wrong and maybe it was better if it was him who did it.

"I would have said yes. We'd have run away."

He'd already lost the ability to answer, even if he thought he heard the sirens outside. Chances were he was dreaming –the roar of the engines sounded real, though.

"You know what? We're leaving tomorrow."

His voice was shaking. This time, he was sure –stupid Kenny was crying.

"As soon as the sun rises, we'll go. You can pick a place, I don't even care."

Craig felt the cold wood table under his cheek. Then he didn't feel anything. And then he finally disappeared too.

What a fucking waste.

"Why did he do that?"

"You were lucky to get out of it alive, Kyle."

"I got out the second I spotted his gun –I just happened to be close to the door."

"Jews have instinct."

"Shuddup, fatass."

"He always seemed a bit… Off, but something like that is…"

"He thought he was playing GTA."

"How could he–"

Kenny didn't comment. What could he have added, anyway?


End file.
